Snow's gone, removal deficits remain

White winter left municipal budgets in the red

SENTINEL & ENTERPRISE / BRETT CRAWFORD
A plow clears Northfield Road in Lunenburg during a storm on March 19. The snow's gone, but the budget impact remains in cities and towns throughout the region.

While folks celebrate the warmer temperatures and longer days, local municipalities are still trying to grapple with how they will cover snow- and ice-removal budget deficits.

Leominster Mayor Dean Mazzarella said the city hasn't totaled up all its winter operations numbers, he said it's likely the city is substantially over what was budgeted.

"It's always difficult. Every year you put a number in there and some years you finish OK, and others you don't. That's just part of the business," he said.

Another difficulty, he said, is making sure all of the sand and salt laid down on the roads gets picked up immediately in keeping with state and federal environmental regulations.

"All that sand, we try to pick it up as soon as we can. It has quite an impact on the environment. We ran sweepers all winter," he said.

Mazzarella said it's about making sure roads are safe and passable, no matter how much snow falls.

"There's a level of service that the community expects. There's manufacturers in this community. Businesses can't take a break because the roads aren't cleared," he said. "They need to function. It's becoming more and more expensive because the expectations are higher. We have storms and the next day the streets are right back down to the black top. With that comes an additional cost."

Fitchburg Mayor Lisa Wong said the city budgets $800,000 a year for snow and ice removal, and is asking for an additional $175,000 to cover the deficit.

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She said $100,000 has already been approved, and she is hoping the remaining $75,000 will be approved by the City Council.

She said this has been the most expensive winter over the last five years for snow and ice removal, but the city has yet to spend a million dollars or more in a given fiscal year to keep the roads cleared.

Lunenburg Public Works Director of Operations Jack Rodriquenz said $250,000 had been allocated for snow and ice removal, and the town spent an additional $100,000 on top of that to keep up all the snow this past winter.

"It's normal to go over but not by that much. It's indicative of how bad the storms were. It's not only every time there was a storm, it's after a storm with sanding," he said. "You have to take into consideration thawing and refreezing. It's long hours depending on the intensity of the storm."

Rodriquenz said that while he must take his budget into account during a snowstorm, the safety of his crew is more important than anything else.

"At a certain amount of time, we have to consider what is the least safe option to leave the men on the road for an extended period of time or pull them off the road when it's snowing an inch an hour," he said.

The amount allocated for snow and ice removal is typically low, Rodriquenz said, compared to other communities, and in large part it's because the town can incur deficits to keep up with what winter delivers.

"The town manager has made some progress in boosting it up to a more realistic amount. Because we can operate in a deficit for the snow, the overall philosophy is to not tie up any more money that may be tied up in the budget," he said. "While we know we can go over, we don't want to go over too much over because we'll have to make it up in the next year's operating budget."

Ashby Highway Superintendent Bill Davis said that as of March 27, winter operations overtime stood at $39,260, which is 218 percent over what was budgeted. Additionally, he said, the town spent $149,318 on winter expenses, 199 percent over what the town had budgeted for.

"People are worried about their emergency services stuff like police and fire and we're ultimately at the bottom of the pile here," Davis said. This year, he said, the town received 99.6 inches of snow, up from 23.6 inches last year.

"I think we only had two snowstorms where we had to plow, which increased the budget, and the rest of the time it was sanding operations," he said. "We didn't have much in the way of ice this year, which was helpful."

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